Does He Look Butch To You Sis?

No. You are not getting it straight

Let me get this straight.

Louis Tomlinson..

Can skate

Can play soccer

Can surf

Can sing

Play the guitar

Play piano

Is famous

Is rich

Is hot

Sassy

Kind

Funny

Has some of the best friends in the world

And has the perfect boyfriend

I’m so jealous it’s not fucking funny.

Post first concert depression hits hard.

I want to hug louis so bad rn. Manifesting to attend a meet and greet soon.

HAHAHAHA LEGIT

it’s so hard to explain to people how you love louis tomlinson with your whole heart but in a purely platonic way and you think he’s the most attractive man on earth but you don’t fancy him and you genuinely think he’s got the hottest body you’ve ever seen but you don’t want it anywhere near yours do you see my problem

Weirdest dream again with louis. This time the set up was on a 1D concert and zayn was nowhere to be found.

I have a toddler with me but I can’t remember if she’s my daughter or what. Louis saw her and interacted with us.

Then he walked into the backstage but not literally at the back since this backstage is located IN FRONT of the stage 🤣

Then next thing I know we were talking there and he hugged me and I hugged him back and he told me he was happy to have experienced being able to do what he wants with the people he love.

I think this was my 3rd time dreaming bout him 🥲

Less than 24 hours and we have this analysis 🤯

Change by Louis Tomlinson 

Analysis 

My first thought when I heard Change is timeless. That’s an amazing, rare achievement. Between Change and Copy, LT2 is shaping up to be a really incredible album that I’ll listen to for the rest of my life because I love it. 

On Change, Louis does a very good job of changing up his delivery and the instrumental to keep it fresh. My only complaint about Walls (album) was that there were times where it felt a bit repetitive and stagnant to me. Change suggests that Louis has totally grown out of that. 

The song starts intimately, then grows into the kind of arena rock I love so much and Louis is so good at. He keeps you interested. Toward the end, we get the psychadelic-via-brit-pop influenced drone which is also a part of KMM’s magic. Between the lyric, delivery, and instrumental, it’s an astonishingly direct moment in the best way.

You might consider that the first part of the song is dripping in nostalgia. It might recall Louis’ romanticized days as a teenager going for cheap beer at an indie club. And it has the sound to match. Then, Louis knocks us into the present. He says ‘stop getting lost in nostalgia and regrets, you have a present to live and a future to look forward to’ and punctuates the message with a psychedelic vibe - almost as though we are being awakened with realization, gaining higher insight. 

There’s also a touch of jazz influence, or perhaps more specifically, Amy Winehouse. I think this influence is the key to the magic Louis has achieved with Copy, Change, and his Beautiful War cover.  Louis describes himself as a subdued and moody performer and the intensity of that attitude gels perfectly with the influence. It shows off his musicality. It’s sexy. It’s genius.

Now, on to the lyrcis! I’ll be using my own version of the lyrics. I will post relevant revisions and link them [here] if necessary when we have an official copy.

‘Oh, oh, ah-oh-oh

Turn on the lights

It’s easy to see

We were just getting by

We weren’t complete

Louis starts by setting up the story telling us that he’s shedding light on a problem, specifically an interpersonal problem. It isn’t yet clear to whom exactly ‘we’ refers.  It may be one other person or a group. It could allude to a romantic partner, fans, friends, etc. 

It parallels “Lights Up” which has the lyric ‘Lights up and they know who you are/do you know who you are’. In both songs the light exposes a troubled sense of identity. Harry feels unsure, Louis feels incomplete. Both songs are retrospective. I think it is fair to say that like Lights Up, Change is a reflection on growing up in the limelight. Harry felt public observation exposed a conflicted sense of self and here, Louis feels that exposure reveals an emptiness. 

It hasn’t been long

That I’ve been away

I don’t know why

Everything’s changed

Louis says it hasn’t been long that he has been away. Maybe a brief time away revealed changes he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he’s an unreliable narrator, and he has been away for a long time, but he feels like he hasn’t. 

‘Cause inside

We’re still the kids on the Friday nights 

These two lines cement this as a song about growing up. Louis has commented several times on feeling his age. This is probably in part due to pop music’s unhealthy obsession with youth, but he also has very legitimate reasons to feel his life has passed him by - first with the incredible, demanding pace of touring with One Direction that removed him from ordinary life and then with the series of personal tragedies as well as the professional setbacks that brought us to today. In Fearless Louis asks someone if they ‘remember being young and strong enough to get it wrong in front of all these people’ and in Change, Louis still does feel young. It’s the dissonance between how he feels and the passage of time that stings.

Silver streets and the neon signs

My suspicion is that “silver streets” doubles as a way of describing how pavement looks at night and as a way of communicating that this memory is romanticized - coated in silver. There is also a song called Silver Streets and a radio show called Silver Street that could, in theory, have nostalgic value for Louis. Silver Streets by BOY seems to have some thematic resonance with Change.

Neon signs may harken back to his Miss You music video in which pink triangle neon signs featured prominently. 

Everything’s changed outside

Sometimes I wonder why

A clever inversion of “I don’t know why / Everything’s changed / ‘Cause inside”

If you need you can call on me

I’ll be the friend you need

Everything’s changed outside

But I feel the same inside

This seems to be Louis telling the other part of his ‘we’ that they can still rely on him just the same as they could in the past. It’s important to him that he is still there for the people.

The kids are alright

That used to be me

Always losing our minds

Out on the street

The Kids Are Alright is a phrase which originated with the The Who song and it is also the title of the band’s rockumentary which might remind Louis of his 1D days. (Also, the film The Kids Are Alright was the first mainstream comedy to depict lesbians raising children together.)

The phrase means that the current generation, for all of their problems and the hand-wringing of their parents, is capable and determined and will be able to grow into responsible adults. “That used to be me” adds the dark implication that, now no longer a kid, he’s may be not alright.  

“Always losing our minds/ Out on the street” evokes the Wellington incident where the boys were literally drunk and running through the streets. Make note of the word “Out” which may be a double entendre meaning both Out as in outside and Out in the queer sense.

A trip down memory lane 

Houses all look the same

There’s different names on the gates

And all the people have changed

Oh it’s such a shame, 

nothing stays the same

This line could be very literal because it’s what you experience when you grow up and people move and the place you lived changes. It may also be a  metaphor for people changing. They look like themselves, but they get married and change their names, and who they are inside changes as they grow up. 

Fame is said to put people into a state of arrested development at the age they got famous. For Louis, he may be feeling 18 inside while he sees his friends maturing through the ordinary rites of passage that sudden fame denied him. And now he can’t revisit the things he left behind when he left home.

‘Cause inside

We’re still the kids on the Friday nights 

Silver streets and the neon signs

Everything’s changed outside

Sometimes I wonder why

If you need you can call on me

I’ll be the friend you need

Everything’s changed outside

But I feel the same inside

When you gonna realize

You don’t get another life

Always overanalyse this, what’s the point?

I know it’ll be alright,

you’ve still got the rest of your life

I am completely obsessed with the brutality of this lyric. I love it. It resonates with my own experience of growing into an adult. I actually had a conversation with a professor that was very important to me which could be poetically depicted this way - I was really distraught over how certain things in my life had played out. He made the point that life is as beautiful and exciting as it is because we only experience them once. (And lemme tell you that man knew a thing or two about an exciting life)

Louis separates “you” from “I” here. You is another person he’s talking to. Maybe “you” is another version of himself or (more likely) “you” is a specific person this is directed at. He’s waiting for this person to realize they are lost in lamenting the past. He asks what the point is of analyzing the past  and wondering what could’ve been when you have a life ahead of you to live.

If the “you” here is Harry, then the obvious parallel is Fine Line with the repeating line “We’ll be alright” but the parallels go deeper. The first two verses of Fine Line might detail the conflict at the heart of this back-and-forth but the last two are more thematically relevant. “There’s things that we’ll never know” implies that he has been thinking about what could’ve been in another life and is coming to terms with the fact that they were not meant to be. “My hand’s at risk, I fold” followed by “Crisp trepidation / I’ll try to shake this soon ”  might relate to the idea of overanalysing, prioritizing ‘what if’ over the future he wants to live. I also think the idea of not getting another life is relevant to Harry because to me it seems apparent that Harry has a very real fear of dying (and his loved ones dying) which comes through on Fine Line and he explicitly stated while on Ellen’s Burning questions at 1:48.

Although I believe firmly in Larry and tonight only reinforced that belief, Larry or not, it’s important to remember that Harry and Louis were close friends in the same band for 5 years and experienced a lot of the same things. Harry’s the younger of the two so it makes some sense that he’s in a position that Louis has already worked through and made peace with. Their respective songs about this concept of making peace with the past reflect their individual struggles to move forward and create a sense of self beyond the band. 

Now it’s time to realise you don’t get another life

Always overanalyse this, what’s the point?

I know it’ll be alright

“Now” points to time as the factor that moves this person from one of the kids who are alright to the adult who has to make peace with the things that happened in their past and the fact there are no do-overs.

We’re still the kids on the Friday nights

Silver streets and the neon signs

Everything’s changed outside

Sometimes I wonder why

“I know it’ll be alright” into “We’re still the kids on the Friday nights”  softens the message up quite a bit. The revelation of ‘you don’t get another life’ reveals the answer to ‘why’. It says we are the same people who did those things, even though they are now in the past. 

If you need you can call on me

I’ll be the friend you need

Everything’s changed outside

But I feel the same inside

And even though time has passed, you can still rely on Louis

When you gonna realise

You don’t get another life

Always overanalyse this, what’s the point?

I know it’ll be alright,

You’ve still got the rest of your life

Now infused with the spirit of taking on the future together, there’s something very hopeful about concluding the song on this lyric.

Moving the story along in the verses and bending the meaning of the chorus is probably my favorite approach to songwriting and holy shit does Change deliver. 

Louis, you beautiful genius, I can’t wait to hear this in all it’s HQ glory, in it’s studio form, and to hear all of its companion songs. And I really can’t wait to sing these lines back to you through my tears. 

man, what a song

ATTENTION SEEKERs!!!

Who doesnt want louis attention you may say??

What would you do then if you hurt him??

Do you want to be loved like that??? Want your admirers to throw fucking bottles at you?! If you want him to notice you play fair idiots

Lucky bastards who can see him live but have the audacity to throw THINGS THAT ARENT SUPPOSED TO BE THROWN ON STAGE!

“[points to something thrown on stage] One of these days it’s gonna knock us out, it’s a heavy bottle this. What is it…cinnamon whiskey, it’s a shit drink i’m not gonna lie.”

— Louis talking to the crowd in Boston 

You look so fresh louis AFTER the rumors that you and H are together in LA ohohohoho 🤤🤤🤤

what the Fuckjjkkkkk

thinking about how harry had "things i can" on his right hand and "things i can't" on his left hand and how now his left hand is basically filled with tattoos about louis because those are the things he can't and then the "i can't change" on the left hand covered up by the anchor which is holding him down, tied down and keeping him strong from going astray. because even though there's things he can't, there's this person who's going to hold onto him as tight as possible.

My hair is having a #💙💚 moment and I love it!!!

Forever reblogging this beautiful trip/analysis

HS1 // THE WALL : A MESS

I love love LOVE HS1. When it came out, I had absolutely no idea what it was about as a whole and that’s the best thing ever because then you basically spend a lifetime (nah) trying to make sense of it and it’s SO MUCH FUN. Here it is, a monster post text about how Harry is the biggest Pink Floyd fanboy ever and we kind of share that really.

Before I start here are some Pink Floyd parallels posts I really love, courtesy of @bluewinnerangel: here and here. The second one is mostly clownery on my part I apologize but it’s a warning of what’s to come in this long ass post.

... this won't make the cut to my professional portfolio.

THE WALL: WHAT IT’S ABOUT

DISCLAIMER just so we're clear, I don’t think this wall has anything to do with someone else’s walls. I think the inspiration and creative process behind both their albums are really different so what I'm saying about HS1 doesn't necessarily apply to Walls. But hey, as someone once said, a wall is a wall.

The Wall is a concept album by Pink Floyd with a narration: it tells us the story of Pink, a rockstar on the verge of a breakdown. He ends up building a metaphorical wall around him. Each brick represents a trauma (the passing of his father during the war, his upbringing, his school education, the Blitz, his love life). Pink isolates himself in a hotel room and the wall is absolute. From there it's a free fall into depression and madness before he makes his wall fall eventually.

Now let’s talk about HS1. We know the sound of some of it kind of reminds us of Pink Floyd, as pop tabloids said (they do love forcing down parallels as much as I do). We also know that with this album, Harry wanted to say things he couldn’t before, and it's all about him, his struggles. Sad stuff.

“I don’t want to hear my favorite artists talk about all the amazing shit they get to do. I want to hear, ‘How did you feel when you were alone in that hotel room, because you chose to be alone?'”

Harry really really likes the idea of being alone in a hotel room for this album.

What we also know is that the album was supposed to be named "Pink". Let’s take a look at the album cover real quick:

Harry is not facing us, he's naked and curled up on himself, surrounded by pink water.

My interpretation regarding this whole analysis: he doesn’t let us in by turning his back on us. Yet he’s still vulnerable and exposed because he’s naked. Pink water is not pure, it's a result of toxic waste. Therefore it could be the form his wall takes: Pink's wall is made of bricks/traumas, Harry's is made of toxic substances/traumas. Here an interesting interpretation by billboard that helped me.

Harry trapped underneath blood water on the SOTT cover:

Harry above water in SOTT's mv standing taller than it

SO this once named “Pink,, album cover could be his own take on Pink’s character. From the get go, he compares himself to the protagonist of The Wall.

HS1 begins and ends within 4 walls: Harry is waiting for someone to come out of their room in MMITH and ends up alone in a hotel room in FTDT. Another bedroom in Only Angel. A room (kitchen) in Two Ghosts. Walls are also mentioned in ESNY (Understand I’m talking to the walls). Regardless of the whole album progression, the setup barely changes, which makes me think that while Fine Line tells us a linear narrative, HS1 is more of a reflection on past traumas with no resolution in the end. Swimming in a fish bowl, a glass half empty. Contrary to Pink who gets to make his wall fall at the end of the album, Harry’s walls are still up. His first album is just the beginning of his solo career, of his story.

For this post I'll focus on some parallels that strike me as LOUD, whether it’s a specific theme, lyric or imagery.

MOTHERHOOD AND WAR

It’s SOTT appreciation time. What did Harry say about it ? It’s inspired by a mother dying after giving birth and basically warning her child about life in the span of 5 minutes. It’s also about various political and social issues, as he said once, vaguely answering a very pointed question in the midst of post 2016 political climate.

There is also a nice death imagery going on with the angelic choirs, the idea of seeing things from above, the bullets, the escapism. I don’t think it’s literally about a mother dying after childbirth. But I don’t think the mother explanation should be dismissed as just 'Harry talking out of his ass to get himself out of a delicate situation'.

I find a lot of interesting parallels with Pink Floyd’s song Mother. It’s about Pink remembering his overprotective mother, who projected on him her own fears and traumas and contributed to the building of his wall.

Just stop your crying it’s a sign of the time, SOTT

Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry, Mother

… to point out the obvious. But it doesn’t stop here, there is also a lot of war talk going on:

Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets ?

Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb ? / Mother, will they put me in the firing line ?

Of course the nature of the war differs from one song to another. Mother’s about WW2 and SOTT, well, oppression of some sort? me thinks closeting. Still in both cases the speaker feels trapped and is asking why. They’re seeking answers because the cruelty they suffer from is undeserved. Pink was a child caught in the war and Harry was a child caught in the money machine. Both are at the beginning of a long, tiring, dehumanizing journey. And a protective mother figure warns them about it.

Basically in both songs we have a voice who asks a dreadful question and a voice immediately attempting to soothe them somehow.

Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets ? > Just stop your crying.

Mother, will they put me in the firing line ? > Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry.

Once again, I don’t think Harry is having a conversation with his mother the way Pink does. But I do suspect the use of motherhood as opposed to the violence and uncertainty regarding the future. He’s using a motherly tone as a way to cope, a made up inner voice to reassure himself. While Pink associates motherhood to trauma, Harry associates it to comfort. It tells him to Go forth and conquer.

Quick additions to the SOTT parallels with The Thin Ice, another song about Pink in relation to his mother:

We never learn, we’ve been here before, SOTT

Dragging behind you the silent reproach of a million tear-stained eyes, The Thin Ice

This voice of the reason reminds them they're carrying history somehow, a legacy. The weight of it adds on the pressure. This war isn’t only about them, it’s about a lot of people and it’s been going on for a long time.

And another addition regarding the war imagery in SOTT with Goodbye Blue Sky (Pink remembering growing up during the Blitz).

Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets ? / Breaking through the atmosphere and things are pretty good from here, SOTT

Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky ?, Goodbye Blue Sky

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST a parallel between SOTT and Stop (where Pink the rockstar is exhausted and begs for his misery to end).

Welcome to the final show, hope you’re wearing your best clothes, SOTT

I want to go home, take off this uniform and leave the show, Stop

ISOLATION

As mentionned before, HS1 starts with MMITH: Harry waiting outside someone’s bedroom and almost begging for that someone to come out. More precisely, H just left the bedroom: he used to share that space with that person, but now there’s a wall between them.

In The Wall’s storyline, Pink completely cuts his ties with the outside world and locks himself in a hotel room: his wall is complete. From there, he wonders if he actually made the right choice isolating himself in Hey you.

Yeah, tons of MMITH and Hey you parallels ahead:

Meet me in the hallway, I just left your bedroom, give me some morphine

Hey you, out there beyond the wall, breaking bottles in the hall, can you help me ?

Is there any more to do ? Just let me know I’ll be at the door/on the floor

Would you touch me ? / Would you help me to carry the stone ? / Can you help me ?

I walked the streets all day

Hey you, out there on the road

Hoping you’ll come around

Don’t tell me there’s no hope at all

Maybe we’ll work it out

Together we stand, divided we fall

Is this not... A dialogue ? MMITH’s speaker is outside the room, staying around just in case the person inside needs them. They’re desperate to prove their unconditional support. Hey you’s speaker is inside the room, trapped behind the wall, and questions whether or not the person waiting for them outside would actually be ready to assume the responsabilities that come with helping them with the load.

Which leads us to the end of HS1, FTDT. Now, Harry’s alone, inside his hotel room as well. After a succession of songs expressing frustration, anger, despair, jealousy, which are as many bricks, he built up his own wall, just like Pink. He distances himself from the "you" in MMITH even more. Now they’re in the same situation:

Played with myself where were you ? / Even my phone misses your call, by the way

Hey you, out there on your own, sitting naked by the phone, would you touch me ?

Still going strong with the hopeless dialogue.

Right after Hey you comes the song Nobody Home, where Pink, fully isolated, gets more and more depressed and can only list the material possessions he bought with that rockstar money. More parallels can be made with FTDT:

Maybe one you’ll call me and tell me that you’re sorry too, FTDT

Ooh, babe when I pick up the phone there’s still nobody home, Nobody Home

AND REAL QUICK I’M SO ANNOYING SORRY THIS IS NOT EVEN HS1 BUT we can all agree that FTDT and Falling have a similar start right ? Alone in his bed, drunk and very sad. Allegedly Harry is at his lowest. Ok. This from Nobody Home…

All down the front of my favourite satin shirt / I’ve got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains

… looks a bit like this ? Though it’s not satin hm.

… And of course he’s in a richly decorated room where he drowns in his sorrow again and again. This room is like a trap he can't escape.

ANYWAY what's interesting is: if Harry identifies to Pink so much throughout this album, to the point where he theoretically almost named the album after him, why is Harry the one beyond the wall in MMITH? Is there someone else who shares similar life experience, traumas, emotional bagage and who could also relate to Pink to some extent ? Someone so similar they could be the ''you'' in the ''we'' of SOTT ? The one Harry wants to get away from here with? Them against the rest of the world ? SOMEONE WHO’S QUITE FAMILIAR WITH A WALL METAPHOR ?

WAR AND KIDS

Another big part of The Wall is the famoso Another Brick In The Wall part 2. The song protests against the abusive school system that works like an industry : it formates people and rips one's individuality off... turning them into a copy of a copy of a copy...

“Hey, teachers! Leave them kids alone!”

“If you don't eat your meat you can't have any pudding...”

“All in all you're just another brick in the wall”

mh why is that blackboard there, what's on it?

…Maybe ?? I can't see very well so it's convenient but.. maybe?

AND I KNOW this is not about Louis but those melted smooth faced masks which all look the same also remind me a lil bit of the concept of the masks in Walls' mv..? a tiny tiny lil bit? coacoac anyone?

… and this is just a white brick wall and I suppose white brick walls are very common but it’s still there so I’ll take it.

In Another Brick In the Wall part 2, the kids are kept under control by the teachers with pudding as a carrot and stick approach (If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding). In the film adaptation of The Wall, Pink dreams of the kids rioting and burning down the school. In Kiwi’s MV, there are no teachers or any adult (except H, who also self inserts as a kid). All the children are gathered in a school gymnasium around a gigantic pile of cakes.

So Kiwi the MV could be Harry’s sequel of ABITW p2: the kids successfully got rid of figures of authority and seized the cakes/pudding which were once used as a weapon against them. The MV feels like a dream sequence because it’s so random, therefore it could be Harry’s fantasy just like the kids rioting were Pink’s fantasy.

What's also interesting is that the persons who make their bread on the speaker's behalf (the woman in Kiwi and the teachers in The Wall) both have a sad love life at home:

When she's alone she goes home to a cactus, Kiwi

When they got home at night, their [...] wives would thrash them, The Happiest Days of our Lives

... Whereas ''home'' is basically Harry's only safe place, his constant, where he always go back to when he feels lost. This love Harry has no matter what makes him superior to them in that regard. "Them" is that external factor that is trying to take his love, his strenght away: the ones that are going to find him soon in Stockholm Syndrome, that made his lover walk away in Happily, that try to force him into submitting by telling him that nothing's ever easy, that the end is near. It's a powerplay between them and Harry, a war.

TO MAKE IT SHORT-ISH, what strikes me is that between the HCU (Harry Cinematic Universe lol) and The Wall, there is this common idea of a war that starts very early in life and results in absolute self-isolation. War corrupts kids, war makes money, war makes the world go round. Pink/Harry were exposed to it very young, had trouble understanding it and accepting it, and had to protect themselves with this metaphorical wall which eventually alienated them from everything.

It would also not be the first time Harry associates with the concept of being involved in a war of some sort: see the tattoo "won’t stop ‘till we surrender’’…

… or even a war involving kids: see the tattoo "I can’t change" inspired by Make It Stop of Rise Against. Bang, bang from the closet walls…

I don't really know how to conclude this properly so tchuss